MONROVIA, July 28: Liberian rebels on Monday seized the second port city of Buchanan as the war-battered capital Monrovia remained in the grip of fierce combat and west African leaders failed to fix a date to send peacekeepers to end the brutal war.

Rebels from the smaller Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL) movement stormed into Buchanan in the morning and wrested it after a fierce battle, residents said, adding that government troops fled the garrison there towards Monrovia.

A humanitarian source said government militiamen had looted cars and other property belonging to international aid agencies before fleeing, leaving the city in rebel control.

However, Liberian Defence Minister Daniel Chea said government forces were still in control of at least part of the city, located some 100 kilometres southeast down the Atlantic coast from the capital.

“We are controlling the west part of the town, the crossroad leading to Monrovia... (and) they are controlling the centre of the town,” he said.

In Monrovia, detonations were heard at regular intervals as forces of the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) main rebel movement pressed on with their two-week-old siege on the city.

The shifting front lines in fighting for control of three key bridges have returned to positions of two days ago, military sources said early Monday.

Meanwhile, top officials from the 15-nation Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) regional bloc Monday failed to fix a date for the deployment of a long awaited and long overdue peacekeeping force.

A military source at a meeting of west African military chiefs in Ghana said that the officials concluded instead that a separate mission must first be sent to evaluate the situation.

An initial Nigerian force was to have been the vanguard for a 3,000-strong ECOWAS peacekeeping force, agreed upon earlier this month by the regional bloc.

As the LURD showed no sign of halting their offensive on Monrovia, the most brutal attack on the city in their nearly five-year war against President Charles Taylor, UN chief Kofi Annan issued a stern warning to the rebels.

“I think by this reckless behaviour that is killing many innocent Liberians and making it impossible for us to deliver humanitarian assistance, they are disqualifying themselves from any future role in Liberian life,” he said.

Amid mounting anger over US inaction in the crisis, US President George W. Bush last Friday ordered the deployment of an amphibious task force off the coast of Liberia — which was founded by freed American slaves in 1822 — but their mandate remains unclear.

The fighting in Monrovia has claimed more than 1,000 mainly civilian lives in two weeks, according Taylor, creating a massive humanitarian crisis in Liberia’s capital.

Up to 200,000 people are living without shelter in the city, and little food or clean water is available.

As Buchanan fell on Monday, hundreds of terrified Liberians swarmed to the Firestone Rubber Plantation, the largest of its kind in Africa, to join some 50,000 displaced people already living there either in camps or with relatives and friends.—AFP